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I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

Irving Kristol

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Irving Kristol
Age: 89 †
Born: 1920
Born: January 22
Died: 2009
Died: September 18
Columnist
Historian
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Publisher
Sociologist
Brooklyn
New York
Always
Consequences
Consequence
Usually
Less
Social
Unanticipated
Action
Agreeable
Important
Observed
Years
Intended

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An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.
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Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable ... People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government.
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People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.
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The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods
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You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.
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.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.
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Young people, especially, are looking for religion so desperately that they are inventing new ones. They should not have to invent new ones the old religions are pretty good.
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Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment.
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As a result of the efforts of Hayek .. and the many others who share his general outlook, the idea of a centrally planned and centrally administered economy, so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, has been discredited.
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A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.
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There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.
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A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.
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It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernity at the very moment when modernity itself is undergoing a kind of spiritual collapse.
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The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.
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What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.
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Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious.
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Power breeds responsibilities, in international affairs as in domestic - or even private. To dodge or disclaim these responsibilities is one form of the abuse of power.
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A liberal is a person who sees a fourteen-year-old girl performing sex acts onstage and wonders if she's being paid minimum wage.
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Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.
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